Subsumption - JANIS LA COUVÉE
In wildest fantasy
Push back salal branch; step into never-ending green gloaming
Disappear among kinnikinnick, lichen and fern
Tread pillow-soft path; leaf-crumble underfoot
Tree crown branches creak and rub—
Soughing against wind, blown in from storm-whipped seas
Surrounded by time and space, peace in the wandering
Surrender of self to an all-encompassing world hidden from view
Trudging forest trails muddy with run-off, pools trickling into streams
Roots abound, pushing through rock, tangling feet
Careful consideration, poles in constant motion, measuring risk
A handhold, a jump
Fear has no meaning here
Rocked in the womb of earth, held close to perpetual rhythm
This is my known world, a place of refuge.
Slime, mold, smut and wort—complicated web, linking life to death
Recumbent giants, returning to earth
Remnants of desecration, hillsides barren once
Moldering stumps now bedecked in finery—tight moss cloches, elegant lace of huckleberry.
On a ridge, looking down, down, down
Wafts sweet scent signature of dry foliage—impossible to pinpoint provenance
Later, deep in underbrush, damp and dank, air redolent of musty earth
Inhale—capture peculiar and particular odours; skank of skunk cabbage, ozone drifting in from
sea
Subsumed—pulled by deepest desires to walk on, forever
Previously Published by the Van Isle Poetry Collective in their inaugural edition, Fall/Winter 2020
Janis La Couvée (she/her) is a writer and poet with a love of wild green spaces, dedicated to conservation efforts in Campbell River, British Columbia—home since time immemorial to the Liǧʷiɫdax̌ʷ people. Her work is published or forthcoming by the League of Canadian Poets, Short Reads, Pure Slush, Harpy Hybrid Review, among others, and has been anthologized in New York Writers Coalition’s Common Unity and the 2023 New Feathers Anthology. Her poem The Man is Not was short-listed for the inaugural Van Isle Poetry Collective contest. Online at janislacouvee.com @lacouvee on X, Mastodon and BlueSky
